Why we travel or why shouldn’t we!

An honest look inward on our motives to travel and beyond…

There is the much regaled story of how Kalidas before he got enlightened, sat on the branch of a tree and cut the same branch in a full blown case of near death stupidity. Well, I am treading the same grounds by writing this now. My bread and butter comes because people travel for whatever reason…and now in peak season where I really need people to join my groups it is the worst time to write this. April and May are the two months where I can make some money to fund my whole year of travels…or consider moving ahead from corner bakery bread to multigrain organic bread out of wheat and leather produced in himalayan valleys and from Amul butter to hand made butter made from yaks fed on golden hay  ( have always wtf is handmade anyway..isn’t everything made with hands, or some people use their feet and asses to make stuff???)

‘I love travel more than anything in the world’,

 ‘ I can’t stay in my house for 2 months before getting withdrawal symptoms if I don’t travel’,

 ‘People who don’t travel haven’t lived their lives’, or

‘Only people who travel are broadminded’…

These are all statements which we ourselves would have made at some point and if you are not that entitled an SOB to say this, you would have at least heard someone else saying it and nodded your head vigorously in agreement.

About two decades back, the idea of holidays and vacations and switching off was nonexistent among middle class. The maximum people did was to go to Ooty or Kodai and if you are from north go to Shimla or Darjeeling. If you are quite well heeled then maybe Malaysia. That’s about it. However the primary destination for holidays used to be just visiting grandparents or relatives in different exotic places like ‘the- biggest- steel plant-or- whatever -jamshedpur’ or ‘do -you –know- where- our -money –gets- minted –nashik’

When I travelled to places like Bhutan or Bali, this is something I noticed there too. Most of their citizens haven’t travelled much outside their country. And interestingly they don’t dream to travel much either. They listen to stories about our countries or stories of lands we have visited quite keenly with an innocent fascination pasted on their faces.

Even now a lot of people in smaller villages in India travel local and travel to visit their extended families in closer destinations. They are not unhappy people. If their kids are studying in local private or govt schools, the classmate still don’t deride them for not having gone abroad on a holiday. One off kid might have gone somewhere by flight and the others listen in awe about the details and about food in airlines or toys they give kids or getting beaten up if it is Indigo they flew…(can’t resist that done a million times sad joke).

That makes you wonder. Wonder a lot about our priorities or lack of it. Of we the urban upwardly mobile.

 So why is it that they don’t want to travel and we do. The answer is simple. They are happy where they are. It is not the lack of money alone because of which people don’t travel. They don’t equate happiness to being away from where they are ‘now’. They are not looking at escaping from their realities. For them their ‘here and now ’ is good enough. They are not working their asses off to fund that Alaskan cruise or the Masai Mara safari. I am sure there are exceptions everywhere. But generally speaking, I feel the increasingly spotted wild animal,(and unfortunately not endangered) is the globe trotting Indian, primarily travelling for all the wrong reasons and motives. The other wild animal, the Chinese tourist is a different story altogether. My experiences involving tourists from the corona homeland have been dismal. They are so unruly that it makes the Manikchand gutka incentive group Indian tourist look like chivalrous British gentry. I guess it is the lack of freedom of expression in their country that makes them express in such a wild way when they are outside their country trampling on the basic right of space of others. Well that’s a story for another day…

 The sighting of ‘happy without having travelled’ humans made me introspect a lot on why I wanted to travel also. And as humbling as it maybe, I realized that a lot of my travel has been motivated not by the lofty assertions of ‘attempts to discover myself’ or ‘understand quaint cultures and people’. It has been plain and simple running away from realities. The everyday realities of joyless cooking, cleaning or grocery shopping , bank dealings, relationship work with in family or friends….the endless challenges of life. It was quite an epiphany and the change that brought in was quite profound too.

After I realized this last year in Bhutan, I was able to enjoy travel, plan travel for me or others with an abandon I had never experienced till then. The importance of being comfortable in your own skin and being able to accept a life situation and above all being grateful. Come to think of it how inappropriate it is to reject so many things we have been blessed with. Yes, we live in times of great economical political and social turmoil. But most of us have a roof above our heads, jobs to pay for all our needs, families that love and care about us, decent health…And yet we say, Its all suffocating and I need the fresh air of geneva to make myself feel better. Hell no! You just need to step out of your room, go to the park nearby, walk a bit, watch people walking the dogs or an elderly couple sitting and chatting quietly and watch life. Gratitude seeps in automatically!

By all means travel. Make me graduate to sour dough bread…but travel, not to run away from any life situation but to gain perspectives on how to handle anything in life better. With more awareness and maturity and to feel alive in daily life. Do not reserve ‘ecstasy’ to only when you step out of your home.

I swear I did not mean to put this promotional bit at the last, but let me in all honesty tell this too. There is a huge influx of ladies only groups, friends only groups, colleagues group etc in travel…good and great fun undeniably. I am all for it. But don’t disregard the importance of travelling with parents or sending parents on travels too. Most of our parents have done shit load of stuff to take us where we are in lives. Now they are batting in the second half after the strategic time out. Most of them don’t have as much time left on the planet as we do. So the expensive shirt or saree or watch you buy them doesn’t have much meaning for them. Keeping in touch, taking care of them as best you can, emotionally supporting them, taking care of their mental health and gifting them experiences or urging them to go on travels while you hold fort at home is something you can do to make their remaining time loaded with memories. Travel with them on short trips even if it is to your native village to offer prayers to your family deity, a wedding of an old family friend…they create memories and that counts!!!